Tiger Leaping Gorge---Hutiaoxia

In order to avoid carting an extra 50 lbs along with us, we tore out the appropriate pages of our China Lonely Planet and referred to it as the Word. It was so much a part of our trip that I felt like a third wheel. Of course we nicknamed it: “LP”. LP told us where to find buses, hostels, embassies, temples, restaurants, and trailheads. But in the case of the Tiger Leaping Gorge trailhead, LP let us down. We knew that our hostel was near the beginning of the gorge hike and as we emerged early in the morning, one of us (I won’t say who) spotted a red gate off in the distance that she (oops) thought could have been the entrance to this rather popular natural wonder. BUT LP—the authority---had us on what felt like a treasure hunt. “Cross the small schoolyard until you see a football pitch. North of the pitch, you will see a tractor road. Follow the tractor road until you find a painted yellow arrow on the lamp post.” It was fun for a few minutes, but knowing that we had eight or nine hours hiking in front of us that day, I was not impressed when the “yellow arrow” lead us up a steep path to no avail. We stopped to re-consult LP and up the path came an old woman and her granddaughter carrying heavy baskets on their backs by way of a strap that crosses the forehead forbidding any neck movement. Josh bravely asked “Hutiaoxia zai nar?” and the young girl, with her head perfectly still, looked over at us from out of the corner of her eye. She lifted her arm and pointed back down the steep path.
Back to square one. After scaling one brick wall with glass shards embedded into the top, we found a tractor road which led us to a… red gate and then we were on the trail.

It was a long day of hiking, with a certain “28 bends” up the mountainside that had me puffing. Josh marched ahead saying “C’mon. We’ll rest at the top!” How about resting at every bend, I thought. It was beautiful. We finally made it to a hostel at dusk, took off our boots and felt happily spent. We met a great group of travelers: one Ukrainian, an English guy and three Americans. They each started as solo travelers and met on a bus a couple days earlier. The seven us played cards, ate massive dinners (followed by even bigger deserts) and drank one Tibetan milk tea after another late into the night. We liked them so much that the next day, we all hiked to the bottom of the gorge together. At the bottom of the gorge, there is a narrow river with a ferry crossing and then you have one last steep hike up and that’s that.

The two men running the ferry were asking 20 Yuan per person to cross. This price was outrageous considering I could easily throw a rock to the other side of the river and there were seven of us. That would be 140 Yuan for three minutes work but that’s economics, I guess. There was no other way to cross.

Ever the bargainers we argued until we were blue in the face (well the American girl who spoke Chinese did. We stood behind her with our eyebrows furrowed and arms crossed nodding every so often). She accused them of trying to cheat us because we were foreign and told them that LP says it’s only 10Yuan to cross. They weren’t going to budge, so we started to back up and act as though we would climb back up and find some alternative. And, guess what, they called our bluff! It was so embarrassing. They turned the motor on and crossed right back to the other side. We just stood there deserted and defeated. We all agreed that we would rather swallow our pride than climb back up to the top of the wrong side, so we yelled over and motioned them to come back. We begrudgingly paid and had a very silent, disgruntled, and humbled three-minute crossing.